


"Sorry, ma'am, we're the good guys."

by actonbell



Series: Avengers, Assembled [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Phil Coulson (Past), Post-Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 17:59:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6249838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Agent Hill:</b> You thought they were a threat. I thought they were a joke. Nick Fury only ever saw them as the Avengers. No matter what he said. If he hadn't seen that, well, Midtown Manhattan would be a smoking crater, for one thing....It was absolutely a bad idea. The wrong people at the wrong time and....It worked. They came together and they saved us! And it's....infuriating! We’re trained to believe in a system, not to gamble....Not to hope. Nick Fury saw something....Running under the system, a current, a connection, a truth....About what we can do, what they would become. The Avengers were the mistake that saved the world. That’s my official statement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Sorry, ma'am, we're the good guys."

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place right after _The Avengers,_ before Steve moves to DC. 
> 
> There are some dialogue quotes from the comics, in which Clint has great lines ("They attack me....here, in my very stronghold!" "Where should we have looked for ya, pal? In beautiful downtown Burbank?"). Some quotes are also from Maria Hill's badass _cut_ speech which originally framed the movie, and serves as my summary. I figure Fury told Phil (and probably Maria) the line Maria tells the WSC in that speech, which is why they react the way they do in the story. There's an interesting [interview with Samuel L. Jackson on how Fury lies](http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/08/18/samuel-l-jackson-sunday-conversation/2665355/) that was useful. 
> 
> Slight AU: I know Pierce first meets Steve in TWS, apparently, but I really wanted it here, so, well, I indulged myself. In MCU canon, Pierce is the son of an American soldier who fought as a member of the 101st Airborne Division. 
> 
> The title is what Agent Coulson tells Jane Foster in _Thor,_ right before he confiscates her life's research.
> 
>    
> In order to avoid reader frustration, I didn't tag every single character who appears in the story, just everyone with a speaking part.

_"The secret is out. For decades, your organization stayed in the shadows, hiding the truth, but now we know -- they're among us. Heroes....and monsters. The world is full of wonders....We can't explain everything we see. But our eyes are open. So what now? There are no more shadows for you to hide in. Something impossible just happened. What are you going to do about it?"_

\- _Agents of SHIELD,_ pilot episode

 

It was only the second time they had all been together since the Battle of New York -- the third, if you counted the shawarma date -- but, just like at Coulson's funeral, none of them really had a chance to talk to each other. Everyone filed in as if they were in after-school detention, or the worst job appraisal meeting ever. Given the number of guys in charcoal suits who looked like they'd been ninja forensic accountants for their past forty lives, it was probably going to be a combination of both. Fury silently pointed them to chairs, all on one side of the table across from the suits, which got Clint's back up automatically. He sat on a small desk pushed under the windows instead, one knee up, one foot swinging. Behind the suits. They didn't like that at all. Neither did Fury.

"Barton, sit at the table, please." Clint thought he saw the corner of Natasha's mouth quirk, but he couldn't be sure. Everyone's face was masked with sorrow and wariness.

Clint put on his very best "lovable rascal" expression. "Respectfully begging your pardon, sir, I can't, that bastard Loki fucked up my knees -- "

_"Barton -- "_

"Had me on them every five minutes, it was such a terrible -- "

"BARTON."

Clint balanced on the back of the chair Fury pointed to again, one foot on the seat, the other propped on its arm. Fury sighed, the kind of huff Clint had heard lions in the zoo let out right before starting a roar.

"I _am_ sitting at the table," he said too-innocently. Fury glared at Natasha, whose face was perfectly straight. From his vantage point, Clint saw Stark and Banner shoot each other a glance, too fast for anyone else to read. Rogers looked down at his clasped hands. Fury sighed again. Clint knew the presence of the Eternal Accountants was the only thing keeping him from growling _Feet on the_ floor. Some blandly too-handsome blond guy smiled at Clint -- who the hell was he? The big guy on the World Security Council, that was it, Fury's rabbi. Fury was at the head, Councilman at the foot, Hill at Fury's right hand. The chair in between Fury and the dark-suited strike force was empty. Clint stared at it. Then Rhodes came in -- "Late again!" Stark said cheerfully -- and sat down in it. _The table's full._ Clint looked away.

Maria went first, and said something about Phil. It was probably good, and Clint liked Maria, but he tugged his earlobe and dialed his Stark-miniaturized, Stark-enhanced, probably Stark-bugged hearing aid down enough to make her voice a pleasant blur. Stark caught the gesture and smirked. Clint scratched his nose with his middle finger. Then Fury talked at them for a while. Clint turned down his hearing aid again -- God, that guy could be heard on the moon, or where was it Loki had gone on and on about, Asgard. It wasn't so much the volume as the resonance: you could feel those bass notes in your fillings, like Pino Palladino's.

Then one of the guys in a charcoal suit and a white starched shirt and a charcoal tie and probably charcoal socks started talking. He had a bunch of fucking black leather folders that he passed around, and Fury glared at each of them in turn until everyone had at least opened one. If Coulson had been there, Clint would've taken out the first sheet and made a paper airplane out of it, or at least threatened to, pressing in the sharp corners and tucks that Phil would have recognized. He looked past the suits out the window at the rubble and wreckage instead, visible even this high up, clearly a reprimand: _Look at what you did._ Like Coulson's empty grave. That had been the worst sight of Clint's life, until the coffin was lowered into it and covered with earth.

Stark, no surprise, was already arguing. He was about as hard to tune out as Fury -- Clint caught "One hundred and sixty _billion,_ no problem! I can -- " and "If you think you can _buy_ you and your friends' way out of this, _Mister_ Stark -- " Fury was building up steam, Hill and Rhodes were the Voices of Reason, Banner was probably silently counting to a thousand in Tibetan to keep The Other Guy from raining accountants down onto the blasted streets, Talia was off in her head doing some Soviet Zen thing Clint had seen her go into when she couldn't charm or fight or run. You couldn't outwait someone raised to stand in breadlines all day. The big blond cheese listened to them all. The suits didn't even need Loki's goddamned sceptre. It was right there with them all, all the time. Look out the window, look in the open grave, look in each heart, there it was. Rogers was....

....was the little fucker taking _notes?_ Clint swayed slightly, trying to get a better look. Nobody noticed, since they were right next to each other. Steve had flipped over the first page in the You Maniacs, You Blew It Up presentation packet and was lightly sketching with an ordinary Bic, not being obvious about it, sitting there quietly occupying himself. The whole page was almost filled. At first he'd had roughed in some of the suits, not spending much time on faces, emphasizing details instead: a buffed Rolex here, a raised Mont Blanc there. The devastation outside the window, more suggested than outlined, as if he couldn't bear to look at it too closely. A pair of truly fancy-ass cufflinks, showing a white enameled eagle's head on a gold background -- where were those, he'd seen them a moment ago -- Clint looked fast down the table at the Secretary, who caught him looking, again, and smiled, _again,_ Jesus, the guy was creepy. Yeah, those were his eagles all right, with  "101st AIRBORNE" above them. Steve had caught the lettering, too. Clint was impressed. He hadn't thought of Cap as a details guy.

Stark was pounding the table, Fury was half out of his chair, hands gripping the edge, Maria was sitting so straight it was like she was standing up. Rhodes was not-quite-yelling at Stark, probably trying to get him to calm the fuck down before they all got thrown in some kind of superhero superjail. One of the suits had taken his jacket off, another was scribbling furiously. Steve just kept on drawing, moving the cheap nasty pen nice and easy.

Those first sketches had been warming up, Clint saw now, Steve recording what he saw around him, like the first full evaluating sweep Clint always did of any room he was in. Even the damn bathroom, in the middle of the night. _Nobody moved my toothpaste jumping into the shower so they could leap out and kill me later, now I can pee._ Like Natasha stretching before a workout. Steve had moved on to portraits of everyone around him, still recognizable, but with a weird edge. Maria was barely visible under a heavy black veil, wearing a high-collared black dress instead of her sensible navy suit that brought out her eyes and sharp-collared blouse. Natasha was a classic forties _femme fatale,_ down to the cigarette and side-parted elaborately waved hair. Fury was a young man with a whole face, burningly handsome, topped by a neat short Jheri curl, sideburns trailing into a trimmed pencil moustache that swept around his jaw, in a young agent's plain white shirt and black suit with black tie. Bruce's and Tony's profiles both had outlines of their other selves around them, gleaming metal and twisted flesh, blurring their own features. Then, finally (because in group photographs we always want most to see our own faces), Clint saw himself.

The other drawings were more worked over. The sketch of Clint was roughed out, with less detail. Steve was drawing Clint as Robin fucking Hood, right out of the Errol Flynn movies he'd seen with Barney as a kid on TV. Robin-Clint was holding a simple longbow, the basic stick and string, and there were all the old great movie cliches: flip hairstyle, tunic, vest or jerkin or whatever the hell that was, soft leather boots with the tops folded over, _tights_ (Steve had given him a nice ass and good legs, much better legs than he really had), a quiver like a goddamn golf bag, and a cap with a jaunty fucking feather. Steve had that gift for caricature, so the drawing somehow suggested the zaniness of a cartoon, someone over-the-top who knew it, knowing they couldn't dazzle you with brilliance so they baffled you with bullshit. The smile was the best part: there were a few practice sketches in the margin, Steve taking care in getting it right. It was big and gleaming and toothy (Clint actually did have teeth that good, _now,_ courtesy of SHIELD's dental plan), but with [an edge of something feral,](http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/giTWuKvrwRa57CLFV6QsL1BzHBb.jpg) almost. The smile said _I'm going to fuck you over so bad, and it's gonna be great._ That sharpness was the same thing as the sarcasm in most of Steve's blandest comments, hidden right out in the open, the little bitter shock of aftertaste.

 _Exactly one week before Phil died, Clint had stopped by in the morning to return a mandatory leave form, because Hill kept squawking about how he was sixty days over the limit and counting. Phil hadn't said anything about the limit, or the form, and neither had Clint, and on his way out of Coulson's office he wadded up the form until it was packed just right like a paper snowball and tossed it too casually over his left shoulder, not looking back. He heard it land as he saw it in his mind -- not in the garbage can, but square in the middle of Coulson's nice neat desk, right next to his coffee cup. Coulson couldn't help but laugh, as Clint had planned. Could you miss if you fucking_ tried?

_No, Clint said. Can't._

Clint couldn't help it, he actually said "Hah!", and not that loud. Steve jerked away from his drawing and glared up at him, Clint drew back and the chair creaked alarmingly, and everything else stopped. Fury was glaring so hard Clint was surprised the eyepatch didn't melt. Steve primly looked away like he'd had nothing to do with it at all (Clint resolved to get him later for that). Clint grinned at the soldiers, the spooks, the handlers, the geniuses, the other freaks, even the accountants. "Oh hey," he said.

"Agent Barton," Fury said, his voice so low and rumbling Clint felt it vibrate in the hammerbones of his ears. "Do you have something to add?"

Clint dropped the smile and sat up straight, poised above them all. This wasn't how he'd planned it (nothing ever was), but hell, he was a master of improvisation, right? Had to be, when you were always fucking up. "Yeah!" he said in a bright, cheery voice. "Yeah, as it turns out I do," rolling it in like a grenade.

Fury's mouth was actually open for a moment. He was going to have to be fast. Fast, _and_ good. Maybe just fast. Faster. Fastest.

_Why can't you miss? Coulson asked. Clint half-turned around, really wanting to make his exit. Never learned how, he said. You know me, not that good at learning lessons._

It wasn't quite the needlescratch moment he'd been hoping for, but it was close. Everyone was staring at him, even Natasha. "You want to know who to blame," he said. "Who fucked up. You keep pointing out how we fucked up, you've got charts and diagrams -- and we did fuck up. A lot. That's what we do: we're fuckups. But have you considered what would've happened if we hadn't been there? To fuck up?" There was a tiny pause, and he hated stepping on it, but he had to be sure they let him finish.

"We know what you think of us -- we're dangerous, walking time bombs. Mistakes. Monsters." This time the silence was longer, and he was able to let it build some. A small smile was curving the very corner of Natasha's mouth, at the left, probably invisible to anyone else but right where he knew to look. Maria was staring at him like he was a cockroach in her California roll. "Maybe we're what you need. In a time of gods and monsters." Now he was going to say what he'd come here to say, and say it for Phil, and not fuck up, and then he didn't care what they did to him, he was already on paid medical leave for God knew how long. Unless they tried sending him on vacation again. Phil wouldn't be there this time to laugh when he tossed the form.

_Barton, Phil said, something in his voice that made Clint's face jerk up, something too soft and sympathetic and forgiving. Affectionate, maybe. Why can't you miss?_

He took a breath, not too deep, nice and easy.

_Nobody was in the hallway. Clint dropped his gaze, studied the doorjamb, seeing under the glossy paint job where the wood was worn from use, even thought he recognized a filled-in bad scratch from one of the dozens of times he'd slammed it or Phil had slammed it in the rough early days, when both of them knew they'd made one of the worst mistakes in their lives that was the best decision at the same time too._

_Clint? Phil asked again._

_I can't miss because I can't, Clint said. I'm on a team with the best of the best. I'm not....Not missing is the only thing that makes me special. And if I'm not special....I'm not on the team. My dad always said, if you can't run with the big dogs, you stay under the porch. I fucked up my life. But I wanted to run with the big dogs. If I miss, I'm just an asshole with a bow. It means I was fooling myself this whole time, and so were you. That's why I never miss. I don't....because I can't._

_He pulled away, shutting the door quietly behind him and going down the mercifully still-empty hall with extra long strides, getting as far away from what he'd said as possible._

"Phil Coulson said to me," he said, voice determinedly steady, "'In a time of gods and monsters, what worth is a man?'" Fury looked down for some reason, quick but there, and so did Maria. "Phil was a man, who died, like the other men and women who died. A hero, not a superhero. Phil was worth....he died for us. For you, for me, for everyone still alive in New York, the world. He wasn't counting costs. He couldn't. He never did. He paid with his life. He knew he might have to, we all do. When you're thinking about how much everything _cost...."_ He put exactly the right vicious spin on the word, his fellow carnies would've been proud. "Think about that."

As the last words left his mouth his spine sagged, out of his control, and he stared at the table, not wanting to look at anyone else, not Talia, not anyone. The room was so quiet he could almost hear Steve breathing next to him, the great bellows of his lungs going gently in and out, like a horse. There was a short, shocked silence. Fury opened his mouth. Clint knew he was about to be fired, banished, cast out and down. It was nearly a relief.

Blondie swung neatly right into the opening, as if they'd planned it together. Given the eloquent words of Agent Barton, certainly would like to take into consideration the excellent points blah great sacrifice freely given blah blah, perhaps Agents Fury and Hill would agree to further testify in front of the WSC, at his special invitation? blah and blah and blah blah blah, waves on waves of smooth political doubletalk covering the rocks, the tide of bullshit coming in. No wonder this guy had gone so far. He might've been able to fleece the people who taught Clint how.

Even if Clint's hearing aid hadn't been turned down, he wouldn't have been able to process the words. He stared at the table, wondering who came in every night to polish the rings off it, dust the built-in shelves, vacuum the flat grey carpet. Maybe it would be him, after today.

When Blondie finally shut up, as if on cue, the charcoal-suited guys all assembled their folders, gathered their pens and papers and charts and diagrams, and smoothly made their exits, leaving everyone else to awkwardly start standing up, stretch, gape out the window, wonder what the fuck had just happened.

Misdirection, was what had just happened -- Clint had grown up in it the midst of it, long before the circus had trained him formally. He could see it the way he saw the center of the bullseye: almost pure instinct. Blondie had gotten something he really wanted, in the guise of saving the team from the vultures and getting Fury and Maria in front of a higher court. But what was it? The shape was there, the blurred outline, but he couldn't make it out. Something big. Something worth trying to buy their affections, their loyalty, by pissing off the establishment. A big flashing _I'm on your side, I'm fighting for you_ sign. Which meant the opposite, which was what he really wanted. What was it?

Stark glared down the table at Blondie. "I don't do birthday parties," he said flatly.

Rhodes actually grabbed Stark by the shoulder, as if he were five, and pushed him ahead of him out of the room. If Potts was lucky he would let her kill Stark first. Maybe they could take turns.

Steve was gathering his stuff up too, trying to hide his drawings, slipping them in his folder -- everyone else had left theirs on the table, Steve would probably take his home and memorize it, in misery -- not looking at anyone, trying to get away. Blondie got up from the end of the table at precisely the right moment and said "Captain Rogers -- "

Steve turned reluctantly, trapped.

"Steve. Please."

"Steve...." Blondie gave a beautiful boyish smile, even better than one of Cap's, showing terrifyingly great Hollywood-quality teeth. What the hell was this guy's game? It had to be a big one. Nobody turned down the fucking Nobel peace prize, if what Fury said was true (and Fury always lied, on some level), unless they had something bigger than that lined up, that they wanted more. "I just wanted to thank you....on behalf of my father." A little shyly, he showed Steve the cufflinks. _Screaming Eagles._ Why was he shoving those in Steve's face? He knew Steve had seen them already.

 _"Hey,"_ Natasha said, right by his side. He had the impression it wasn't for the first time. "Sorry," he told her, and dialed the StarkAid back up. Maria was behind her, glaring at him, her eyes too bright. Phil had brought her in too, hand-picked her; there was a picture in her office of the two of them on her very first day as an Agent. Clint knew Natasha kept her own picture of her and Phil somewhere safe. He'd given his copy of brand-new Agent Barton with Agent Coulson to Phil, who had kept it on his desk; Clint had gotten it back, after the funeral.

"You son-of-a-bitch," Maria said, her voice low and controlled, and she turned on her heel and marched out. Fury looked at Clint, not a glare, one of his regular unreadable looks, and went after her. Thankfully, fucking _finally,_ Blondie finished jerking poor Steve around and went off after Fury, like he'd been waiting for it. "And a hotsky-trotsky to you, you long-winded creep," Clint muttered, to relieve the itchy suspicion wrapping itself around his neck, like a too-tight shirt collar.

"You know," Natasha told Clint seriously, "I think she likes you."

"I know she likes me. She hasn't shot me."

"You're taking me out to dinner. In honour of New York not blowing up."

"Doesn't New York sort of not-blow-up every day?"

"Not when we're around." She followed his gaze to the doorway Blondie had just gone out of, looked back, and asked, "Why don't you like him?" It was honest curiosity; Natasha neither liked nor disliked most of the people she worked with. She ranked and evaluated them based on field performances instead, which probably would have given them nightmares if they'd known.

As usual, Clint disguised the truth as a wisecrack, falling back on his instincts at the same time. "He _smells_ wrong."

Natasha laughed, a single sharp note, and to his surprise Clint heard Steve chuckle behind him -- a weak one, half-forced, but there. "He certainly loves cologne," Steve said, and actually made a little bit of a face. "The stuff that was more popular when _I_ was young -- lavender, lemon verbena. I don't know why someone who didn't grow up with it would like it."

Clint repressed the almost irresistible urge to ask Steve if _he'd_ worn lavender cologne -- if he asked Stark about it later, he could probably dig up a period brand -- and said instead, "I'm taking Talia out to dinner. Want to join us?"

Steve hesitated. "I, well...." Talia smiled up at him. Steve shrugged. "Sure, why not."

"Now that's the kind of enthusiastic response to my plans I love to hear," Clint said.

"Does anyone ever have enthusiastic responses to your plans?"

"Nobody never. Not even Phil. Oh, here -- " Clint showed Natasha the paper he'd abstracted from Steve, himself as Robin Hood, her portrait as one of Marlowe's dangerous dames, all the other speed-sketches. Steve let out a hilarious annoyed _"Hey!"_ and tried grabbing it back, but Natasha leaned out of reach.

"Steve, these are good. Really good." She smiled, still scanning the pen lines, almost studying them.

"Oh, well," Steve said, slightly pink, like he had been when Blondie was screwing with him.

"For Chrissakes, Cap, when a beautiful woman gives you a compliment, just smile and say thank you. -- Did you notice he gave me a nice ass?"

"I always notice," Natasha said, as Steve held the door for her. Clint saw him pause on the threshold and turn, to look back over his shoulder at the city, still smoking in some parts, so far below.


End file.
